Last week, on Thursday, May 22, 2008, the man charged with the rape-slaying of a University of Vermont student was found guilty of aggravated murder after the jury deliberated barely six hours. The randomness of the case, as well as the unprovoked, wanton violence involved, left many Vermont residents shaken.
Michelle Gardner-Quinn, 21, of Arlington, Vermont, was majoring in environmental studies when she transferred to the University of Vermont. She was only a few weeks into the fall semester when she disappeared on October 7, 2006. For the next six days police and volunteer search teams looked for any signs of the young coed throughout Burlington as well as the neighboring forests and countryside. Even the lake adjacent to the small city was searched, to no avail. Michelle had simply vanished, without a trace.
Her partially-clad body, however, was soon found by a hiker. It had been placed inside a gap between two large rocks in the hiking area at Huntington Gorge, and an attempt had been made to cover it up with leaves. An examination of her body showed that she had been sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled. Semen was collected from her body.
"This was a violent, random crime," said Chittenden County State's Attorney T.J. Donovan. "It scared a lot of people."
According to witnesses interviewed during the investigation, Michelle had been out with friends during homecoming weekend when she disappeared. At some point during the early morning hours, she became separated from her friends and was attempting to call one of them when her cellular phone's battery died. She apparently borrowed a cell phone from Brian Rooney, a 37-year-old construction worker and father, at approximately 2:35 a.m., during a random encounter. The ensuing investigation eventually linked Michelle to Rooney, and police found a videotape of them taken by a jewelry store surveillance camera as the two of them walked up Main Street in Burlington. Based on the depiction viewed on the tape, she did not appear distressed and it did not seem that she was in any immediate danger—but the time that the videotaped images were taken was the last time she was known to have been alive.
Despite the fact that there were no witnesses, investigators built a case against Rooney using the jewelry store video, inconsistent statements that he had made to the police and others and by using the most damning evidence of all—the fact that his DNA matched the DNA from the semen recovered from Michelle's body.
"Their entire case is predicated upon two-tenths of a nanogram in a suspect source of DNA," said Rooney's defense attorney, David Sleigh, at trial.
But the jury wasn't impressed by the defense argument in a case that had been granted a change of venue from Burlington to Rutland, nearly 70 miles away, to ensure a fair trial, and swiftly convicted Rooney of aggravated murder. Rooney faces a mandatory sentence of life without parole.
"Justice works once in a while," said the victim's mother after the verdict was announced.
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